Earth 'going downhill' as consumption rises, report says

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN

Updated ()

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A satellite image features the heart-shaped northern tip of the western half of the Large Aral Sea (or South Aral Sea) in Central Asia. Once the world's fourth-largest inland body of water, the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking over the past 50 years since the rivers that fed it were diverted for irrigation. In 2005, a dam was built between the sea's northern and southern sections to help improve water resource management and reverse the man-made environmental disaster. The dam allowed the river to feed the northern Aral, which has begun to recover. It hasn't solved the entire problem though, as the southern section is expected to dry out completely by 2020. The whitish area surrounding the lakebed is a vast salt plain, now called the Aralkum Desert, left behind by the evaporating sea. It comprises some 40 000 sq km zone of dry, white salt and mineral terrain. Each year violent sandstorms pick up at least 150 000 tonnes of salt and sand from Aralkum and transport them across hundreds of kilometres, causing severe health problems for the local population and making regional winters colder and summers hotter.

Story highlights

Living Planet Report shows world is still consuming more than Earth can replenish

Top 10 polluting countries topped by Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Denmark

From high above the earth, an astronaut launched the latest report card on the health of the planet which once again paints an alarming image of over-consumption and exploitation.

In a recorded message, Andre Kuipers, an astronaut with the European Space Agency on his second mission to the International Space Station, said he had a unique view of the earth which he orbits 16 times a day.

"From space, you see the forest fires, you see the air pollution, you see erosion," he said, launching the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report for 2012.

The biennial survey shows the world is still consuming far more than the Earth can replenish, along with a widening and "potentially catastrophic" gap between the ecological footprints of rich and poor nations.

"The report is clear that we're still going downhill, that our ecological footprint, the pressure we put on the earth's resources, continues to rise so we're now using 50% more resources that the earth can replenish and biodiversity continues to decline," said Jim Leape, Director General of WWF International.

Cuba – Nespoli posted regular updates on Twitter. "I was amazed by the response from people. It was very fulfilling for me," he said.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

Toau, French Polynesia – "I was doing something which was very interesting for me, but it made me more happy that I could share the images," Nespoli said.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

Ice in northern Canada – The International Space Station (ISS) orbits at a height of around 400 kilometers above the Earth's surface and travels at 20,000 kilometers-per-hour.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

Tibesti Mountains, Chad, Africa – "I cannot say we are bad, or that we are causing the planet to go hot or cold. We don't have enough data. But it's clear that we are doing things that have a huge potential of making changes," Nespoli said.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

Tibesti Mountains, Chad, Africa – "We need to understand more. It's a risky situation with a very delicate eco-system balance which can be dramatically skewed," he says.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

Nespoli in the ISS Cupola – Paolo Nespoli in the Cupola of the International Space Station. It has seven windows and provides a pressurized observation and work area for astronauts, according to the European Space Agency.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

ISS – The International Space Station weighs 360 tons and has more than 820 cubic meters of pressurised space according to the European Space Agency.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

Docking at the ISS – "A lot of the time you're up there you are working so you don't have a lot of time to look out of the window. When you do, most of the time you see oceans and clouds -- which is really nice," Nespoli said.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

London at night – "The impact we are having on this planet is surely microscopic when we look at one single event, but when you look at it and you repeat these events all over - a few miles across here, a few miles across there, a river here, a river there, a city here, a city there -- and it's clear we are a major force in shaping the crust of this planet," Nespoli said.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

Aurora Borealis – "I would, for sure, send up the politicians (some of them we should leave there!) to change the way they think, but I would also send up philosophers, journalists and theologians," he said.

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Photos:An astronaut's view of Earth

Moonrise – "You see the atmosphere which covers the earth like a blanket. It looked like if I would blow on it too hard it would float away. We know if that get's corrupted in a certain way that's the end," Nespoli said.

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The report includes a list of the world's top 10 polluting countries topped by Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East. They're followed by Denmark, Belgium and the United States. Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland make up the remainder.

Countries are ranked on their consumption of renewable resources versus their biocapacity, or ability to produce renewable resources and absorb CO2 emissions. Dominating the list are high-income countries, whose average ecological footprint is now five times that of low-income nations.

And the gap is increasing. Between 1970 and 2008, the ecological footprint of high-income nations rose seven percent, the report said. Over that period, the same index for poor countries tumbled 60%.

The disparity indicates richer nations are buying resources from poorer countries which have natural resources available to exploit, the report said.

"What one of the things that we as a global community have been slow to realize is that even in an industrialized economy will still demand very directly on the health of natural systems to provide the water we drink and to keep the climate stable," Leape said.

"As you see forest loss continue, as you see the depletion of rivers, you are undercutting the foundation for economic development in those countries," he said.

Leape said there are signs some large business and governments are taking steps to reduce their burden on the environment. Denmark, for example, number four on the list of worst polluters, has pledged to double the nation's windpower and to wean itself off fossil fuels by 2050.

"What you see now is companies and governments who are on the vanguard beginning to make shifts but those shifts have to be driven down into entire markets and across all governments. We're not yet getting to the scale required to begin to bend the curves," Leape said.

The impact of rich nations worldwide is clear in figures showing that the steepest drop in biodiversity over the past 40 years has occurred in poorer countries. The decline, the report said, demonstrates "how the poorest and most vulnerable nations are subsidizing the lifestyles of wealthier nations."

"Growing external resource dependencies are putting countries at significant risk," said Mathis Wackernagel, President of Global Footprint Network, which collaborated with the WWF and the Zoological Society of London on the report.

"Using ever more nature, while having less is a dangerous strategy, yet most countries continue to pursue this path," he said.

The main feature of the Living Planet Report is the Living Planet Index which tracks the health of the world's ecosystems by monitoring 9,000 populations of more than 2,600 species.

It shows a near 30% drop in biodiversity since 1970, and an even faster decline in the tropics of 60%. However, the index for temperate regions rose 31%, as some species showed signs of recovery after huge biodiversity losses the previous century.

"The read down on the temperate zone masks much more precipitous declines in other parts of the world. You see a huge loss of biodiversity across the tropics and in the poorest countries and I think that's the most alarming fact in those indices," Leape said.

The report was released just five weeks before the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, otherwise known as Rio +20.

"We need to see real leadership from the governments of the world coming together to commit themselves to step up to this challenge," Leape said.

"They can take some decisions in Rio that really would make a difference in terms of setting a new course for the global economy."